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Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

731 Words3 Pages

Can a White Man Ever Fully Empathize with the Black Race?
In his novel Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin tells his brave story of changing his skin color to experience racism. Griffin was born a white man and decided that he wanted to feel racism for himself. He did everything that he could to change the color of his skin. Although he did experience racism firsthand, he was only a temporary Negro for 6 weeks. Griffin knew that he would soon be returning to his white skin and because of this he can never fully empathize with the black race.
While Griffin was a white man, he could get jobs easily. He was smart and had very good qualities. As soon as he changed his skin color, getting jobs became an everyday task. “I met all of the rebuffs, only gentleness when they informed me they could not use my services as a typist, bookkeeper, etc. The patterns became the same” (Griffin 38). He experienced what …show more content…

He was deprived of his rights multiple times but can never fully understand what a black man would feel. Griffin was on the same page with the Negroes when he wasn’t allowed to get off the bus, but the white people were. “You announced a rest stop. The whites all got off, I said, unable to believe he really meant to deprive us of rest-room privileges” (Griffin 60). From this quote, it seems like Griffin didn’t even know about bus segregation. The only way for him to understand was for him to be put into a black man’s shoes. Another issue that Griffin was oblivious to was a Negroes’ sitting privileges- he didn’t know there were certain benches that he couldn’t sit on. “With perfect courtesy he said, you’d better find yourself someplace else to rest” (Griffin 43). This quote shows that Griffin did experience racism firsthand, but there were some problems that he didn’t even know about. He couldn’t have understood all the racism a Negro experiences every day, unless he was always a black

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The book Black Like Me was written by a man who did the unthinkable in 1959. John Howard Griffin purposely altered the pigment in his skin to darken. He had transformed himself into a black man! Within the text, he describes his disturbing encounters with the inevitable traveling deep into the South. From New Orleans, Louisiana to Mobile, Alabama he journeyed through masses of racism but also discovered a newfound respect and kindness given by his fellow Negroes.

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In the book, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin was about a man who went on a journey to experience discrimination and racism first hand. I believe just because he changed his skin color for only 6 weeks he did truly experience racism first hand. Now most people’s realization of racism and discrimination from back in the 1800’s with slavery and blacks being used and sold like tools. John Griffin experience someone being lynched to death, white people taking all the good jobs and gave the Negros little to no jobs to work at, and, Negroes weren’t aloud to have or use the same things that whites got to 2 U.S. Code § 1311- states that anyone of any race has the right to be employed, and the civil rights act which means anyone of any race has the same rights. In the book, Griffin was looking for three days

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The writer of Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin wrote one of the most eye opening book on racism, prejudice and ignorance all African-Americans faced in the south. Griffin writes about his first hand experience of being a black man in the 1960’s. He accomplished this was by taking pills and staining his skin to temporarily turn him into a black man. Stated in the preface “This began as a scientific research study of the Negro in the south.. it traces the changes that occur to heart and body and intelligence when a so called first-class citizen is cast on the junk heap of second-class citizenship.”

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